Hello, my name is Yong-kyun Kim, working for the Ministry of Interior and Safety of Korea. 20 years ago, I embarked on a personal and professional journey to find the answer to a fundamental question, how can a nation be resilient to disaster? To answer this question for you, I will connect four fundamental parts into whole. The concept of disaster, the evolution of disaster risk management, disaster policies of Korea, and our resilient feature. I hope by the end of this lecture, you will have a better understanding of not only what is disaster risk management, but also what should be done for our disaster resilient feature. This lecture is composed of five sections. The first part is designed to help you develop a conceptual framework of disaster risk management through understanding the concepts of disaster, disaster categorization, and leading disaster theories. This part also describes the evolutionary trajectory of disaster risk management. The second one will address the statistical characteristics of Korean disasters, and identify focusing event that triggered the policy change. The third part will explain sound disaster policies of Korea, through four phases of disaster management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The first part is science and technology for disaster risk management. Finally, in the last part, I will propose 10 principles for disaster resilient nation. It targets policy improvements for Korea. However, the 10 principles can also be applied to other countries once it is tailored to their social, economic, and cultural environment. There has been ongoing debate on defining and conceptualizing a term for human caused and naturally occurring calamities. A commonly used English word is disaster. The concept of disaster has been understood and defined in various ways, depending on the era and the purpose of users such as national government, UN agencies, and scholars. So, what is the etymology of disaster? The commonly used English word disaster originated from the Latin words 'Dis + Astro.' Meaning, Ominous Star. Disaster as reflected in this origin, had been historically used to lifo or messy and sudden calamity due to the unfavourable position of our planet or star. Implying impossible to control because it was caused by God's will. In other words, disaster had been mostly considered as a naturally occurring event resulting from natural hazards such as typhoons and earthquakes. Currently, it has matured to include the disasters triggered by technological and social hazard, reflecting the evolutionary circumstances of contemporary society. In Korean, the word disaster is translated as Jae-nan or Jae-hae. To conceptualize disaster more clearly, I will examine the terms related to disaster, which are safety, security, risk, and crisis. First, the English word safe originated from the old French word 'sauf' meaning free from danger. Which is derived from the Latin word 'salvus' meaning in good health. Its accepted depiction is nothing dangerous or harmful. Since the 19th century, it has been commonly used to sort out industrial accident. The word safety is translated in Korean as An-jeon. An-jeon is composed of two characters, 'An' meaning uncomfortable state, and 'jeon' meaning a whole and entire state. Second, the term security ordinate from a combination of the Latin word, 'se' meaning without, and 'cura' meaning concern or care. Therefore, it originally indicates no anxiety. Its accepted definition is the state of being protected or safe from harm. In Korea, the term security in the UN Charter of 1947 was translated as An-bo. Third, the term risk originated from Spanish nautical word meaning penetrating into the reefs. As a term risk became widely used, its meaning expanded to mean a hardship that must be injured to obtain wealth. In modern times, researchers and government officials have developed diverse definitions about risk to reflect the nature of his variety. The United Nations developed program defines the risk as the probability of a harmful consequences or expected loss resulting from interactions between nature or human induced nature and vulnerable conditions. In the national infrastructure protection plan, Department of Homeland Security considered risk element as threat to nature and magnitude, vulnerability to a threat, and consequence that could result. Hado in 2014 noticed that that risk is composed of three elements. First one, the probability and frequency of hazard occurring. Second, the level of exposure of people and property to the hazard, and three, the effect or costs both direct and indirect over this exposure. Finally, the origin of the word crisis comes from the Greek word 'Krinein' meaning separate, and it is used as the medical term of a turning point of life and death. Quarantelli in 1998, viewed that a crisis of a certain organization appears in the three following interrelated conditions. A type of threat including organizational value, sudden occurrence of one unexpected event, and a need to respond collectively as the outcome may seem more negative otherwise. The acceptable definition of the term crisis is a difficult or dangerous situation that needs serious attention. The Korean word for risk is 'Wi-gi'. 'Wi' meaning danger and 'gi' meaning opportunity. In Korea, the Framework Act on the Management of the Disasters and Safety defines disaster as what causes or is likely to cause any harm to the lives, bodies, and properties of citizens and the state. When it was enacted in 2004, the act categorized the disaster into three types. Disasters triggered by nature hazard, human-caused disasters, and social disasters caused by the parallelization of the state's political systems. In 2013, the revised version of the act combined human cause of disasters and social disasters into one word, social disaster. The currently used definition of disaster in Korea is any of the following which actually causes or is likely to cause any harm to their lives, physical safety, and property of citizens and the state, with the two categorization, natural disaster and social disaster. The first appearance of the definition of disaster in Korean law was in the 1967 countermeasure against the Typhoons and Floods Act, where the Korean word for disaster Jae-hae was defined as damages caused by a flood, downpour, heavy snow fall, storm, or tidal wave and other natural phenomena. Which means, disaster triggered by climatological, hydrological, and meteorological hazards. With regard to human-caused disasters, the disaster Control Act enacted on July 18th,1995. In the wake of the sample department store collapse defined the Korean word Jae-nan as accidents that may cause any harm to their lives and properties of citizens and the state such as fire, collapse, explosure, surface substance, chemical, biological, and radioactive accident. An environmental pollution incidents excluding natural disasters. In this act, disaster was interpreted to be the Korean word Jae-nan, meaning the disaster triggered by technological hazard or man-made hazard. Therefore, this act brought about confusion over the concept of disaster in Korea until it was abolished in 2004, leveling the single English word disaster with the two different terms, Jae-hae and Jae-nan. Moving to how other nations perceive and define disaster. First, the United States of America distinguished major disaster from emergency in the Robbert T. Stafford, Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. In the Stafford act, emergency means any occasion or instance for which in the determination of the president, federal assistance is needed to supplement state and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property, public health, and safety. Or to lessen the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States. In contrast, major disaster mean any natural catastrophe or regardless of cause, any fire, flood, or explosion in any part of the USA, which in the determination of the president causes damage of a sufficient severety and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance under the act. The purpose of the major disaster declaration is to supplement the effort and available resources of state and local governments, and disaster relief organizations in alleviating the damages, loss, hardship, or suffering. In Japan, disaster is defined as damages caused by Typhoon, downpour, heavy snowfall, flood, tidal wave, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, other natural phenomena, or massive fire explosion, and other causes in The Basic Disaster Countermeasure Act. All three countries have commonly referred to disaster as what is triggered by natural, technological, or social hazard. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction perceives disaster as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human material, economic, or environmental losses and impacts. In general, when disaster occurs the impact exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. Normally, in which way disaster is perceived, they are essentially the same. In particular, I wanted to emphasize that disaster is not just a technical issue, but should be understood as a social, economic, and environmental issue. Also, how each person or organization perceive and react to the risk is getting more important in the disaster risk management.
